One of our rising junior traders, who has been outperforming the market, had an extremely frustrating trading day.
There is almost nothing worse than putting on a good trade, being in the money with significant open profits, and then giving it all back. Sigh.
However, there are steps that you can take so that those frustrating trades and frustrating trading days become trading sessions that propel your trading career.
Let’s talk about how you can make that happen.
First, let’s start with the words from that frustrated trader on our desk:
Just an immensely frustrating day. I traded so well, entries were great and my size was aggressive. Added when i was right. Three times was up around 2k in TLRY short and really just had no reason to cover seeing as though it was still green on the day + looked to really be breaking down. Obviously, twice Citron Research (with a negative hit piece on TLRY) added fuel to the fire at the lows and clearly caused the stock to squeeze. I had a plan.. and that was to begin taking significant profits at 95 and below 95.. looked to be heading there but of course citron then came out and the stock squeezed. Added on the bounce, the second bounce, eventually stopped out when it held VWAP and broke higher.Just really frustrating.
I was in the same trade, in full transparency. And I got stopped out as well. And it didn’t feel so great to me either. I, also, was very surprised that the short did not work in TLRY today after it broke below 104 for the second time.
But let’s try a different perspective in looking at our trade experience today. Was it frustrating because we gave back significant open profits? Or was it a trading session more like my tweet below:
As the top trader on our desk said in this talk to our newest hires, as traders (with edge) “we are the casino”. The odds are in our favor. With that said, some trades will not work out. Some good trades will not work out. Some great trades with not work out.
But, what I also love from this talk with our top trader, is his ultimate trading goal that directly helps reframe this junior trader’s frustrations today. His goal is to become one of the best short-term traders ever. Losing 300k in a trade helped him become a bigger and better trader, learning from that experience. Each trading session is an opportunity to learn and improve as a trader, if you work to extract its lessons.
What is your ultimate trading goal? Is it to profit in that one TLRY short? Or is it to become the best trader that you can be?
If it is the later, then today was an experience to help you improve. A memorable trading experience to help you feel comfortable taking on more risk. A vital experience learning more about how the hottest sector of late, the pot names, move. Screen time trading the most volatile names in the markets, that will make trading the next most volatile names in the markets much easier.
Your goal is to become as good as you can be. It is much better than what you are now. Well it is if you stop focusing on the results of a trading session or trade. And start focusing on what you can learn from each trading session to propel further trading achievement.
How you view the reward from each trading session is what determines a frustrating trading session from a valuable day taking you one step closer to your ultimate goal.
This junior trader is going to become a really good trader. In fact, he is pretty good right now. And this experience is only going to make him better. So let’s quickly put aside the frustration from a day like today and be grateful that it just made you a better trader.
*no relevant positions
